The Auckland Transition Agency is finally got around to naming an interim CEO for the Auckland Transport council-controlled organisation, which is only a couple of months away from coming into existence. Rumours had been flying around that we might get some high-flying transport visionary from overseas, but that hasn’t happened.
Here’s the ATA’s media release:
Interim Chief Executive for Auckland Transport
The Interim Chief Executive of Auckland Transport is to be Dr David Warburton, the Auckland Transition Agency (ATA) announced today.
Dr Warburton, 60, has extensive senior management experience and is currently the chief executive for Australia and New Zealand of infrastructure and consulting company CPG, part of Downer EDI.
He will take up the role in September for a fixed term until 30 June 2012 and will live in Auckland.
Dr Warburton is the former chief executive of Wanganui District Council and serves on both Whanganui and Mid-Central district health boards. He has a PhD in environmental engineering from Massey University.
Dr Warburton said: “Transport is the number one issue faced by many Aucklanders and I’m looking forward to leading the team at Auckland Transport as it plays its part in making Auckland greater.”
ATA Executive Chairman Mark Ford described Dr Warburton as “an outstanding candidate for the role”.
Mr Ford said: “His background includes significant infrastructure leadership and he is experienced in working collaboratively with local government and other stakeholders. His experience will be invaluable to the new organisation as it delivers results for the people of Auckland.”
A former Auckland resident, Dr Warburton said: “I’m looking forward to returning to Auckland after being away for nine years. This is an exciting time for the city and I welcome the opportunity we have to address Auckland’s transport challenges.”
So he’s currently the CEO of part of an infrastructure building company, and formerly he was CEO of a District Council.
I look forward to seeing how Dr Warburton goes, and I hope he can be visionary for Auckland’s transport system in a way that doesn’t come back to “let’s build more roads”.
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What experience does he have in transport planning? Or like Joyce is the fact that he drives a car sufficient experience?
From what I’ve heard he has zero experience in urban transport matters.
He’s not really in a position which requires transport planning, he will have people under him on the organisational structure who will be doing the planning work, it seems he has quite allot of leadership and management skills, also a degree in environmental engineering. Also he has already been working in a infrastructural chief executive role so would have more experience than most for this sort of position.
How effective he is will be the question but I’m not to worried at the moment, we’ll just have to wait and see.
Joyce also has a lot of people under him supposedly doing the planning, however, Joyce despite his complete and utter lack of experience in transport planning is still calling the shots. When was the last time we employed a diary farmer to run Auckland Universiy, ot Telecom NZ hired someone with a town planning degree to run its operations? So why is it that people with no clue about transport keep ending up in key positions spending ridiculous amounts of our money on meaningless projects…
Actually, it is a quite common thing (especially in today’s business world) to hire managers that have zero clue about the particular industry that they are hired for. The culture of “MBA’s can lead anything, because they know how to MANAGE” is all-pervasive, and very depressing. How can you respect your boss when you have to teach HIM what kind of work you are doing for him? Promotion from the ranks is underrated these days, I tell you (and no, I wasn’t even in the running 😉 )